Writing Matters

Announcing Marilynne's New Blog: WebOver50

When Leslie and I started E-WRITE in 1996 “the e-mail” was a very new tool and Al Gore was inventing the Internet. We knew that e-mail and the web would change how we communicate. But who could have envisioned Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or blogs? 

I’ve noticed that many of my over 50 friends and colleagues have been slow to adopt social media and the generation of new web apps. Why? Many feel it is unsafe, overwhelming and time consuming. And how or why would someone over 50 use it?

That’s why I’ve started a new blog WebOver50: The Web Is Wasted on the Young. Its purpose is to

• Sort through the jungle of web apps and tell over 50s what’s worth their time and what’s not.
• Show how to web-surf safely.
• Explain all-things-web in plain English.

Some sample posts:

• Should You Join Facebook Now?
• YouTube for How To's: Just-In-Time Learning
• How to Find Free Shipping E-tailers
• Safe Social Networking: What Advice Should You Give Your Kids?

While I’m donning a new hat—publisher of WebOver50—I’ll still be wearing my comfortable and familiar E-WRITE hat. That means I’ll still be writing web content for E-WRITE clients, working with Leslie to develop new course content, and contributing Writing Matters posts

Please take a look at WebOver50 —even if you are under 50. And pass this on to your over 50 friends and colleagues. Please subscribe and let me know what you think. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.  

 --Marilynne Rudick

2010 AP Stylebook Announces "Website" is One Word; "E-Mail" Retains Hyphen

The Associated Press announced yesterday that it has added a separate Social Media Guidelines section to its 2010 AP Stylebook. The new section includes information on correct use of such terms as "... app, blogs, click-throughs, friend and unfriend, metadata, RSS, search engine optimization, smart phone, trending, widget and wiki."

The new Guidelines offer a profound change. For the first time, the Stylebook has decreed that website is one word. But they're keeping e-mail old school: as far as AP is concerned, the hyphen stays.

On another note, while the AP Stylebook folks have given their guidance on writing the phrase search engine optimization, they sure have fallen flat on optimizing their press release page for  search engines. Their browser window title is pr_060210a.html.  Now, when was the last time someone Googled that sequence of numbers and letters?

 

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Is E-Mail Dead? Not So Fast!

Since 2006, pundits have been predicting the death of e-mail. The word on the street is that people--particularly under 30s--have abandoned e-mail for IM, texting, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. Jim Lodico, author of the Social Media 2.0 blog, summarizes the reasons most often given for e-mail's demise  (among them: too slow, takes too much time, too much spam). 

But new research suggests it may be too early to give e-mail last rites. In "View from the Social Inbox 2010," Merkle, a customer relations marketing agency, finds that time spent with personal or social e-mail in the fall of 2009 was even with the prior year. "Nearly three-quarters of respondents spent at least 20 minutes a week e-mailing friends and family." What's more, Merkle found that social network users check their inboxes more frequently than those who shun social sites. "Forty-two percent of social networkers check their e-mail account four or more times a day, compared to just 27% of their non-networked counterparts." 

Merkle's findings were similar to those reported by The Nielsen Company in "Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email?" Nielsen also found that social media use makes people consume more e-mail, not less.  In part, that's because you can choose to get an e-mail every time a friend comments on a posting or engages in an activity. And as people make connections though social media, they "may extend those connections to e-mail." 

The prediction that social media will kill e-mail reminds me of the premature death notices that accompany nearly every new technology: TV will kill radio, videos will kill movies. Most times, old technologies survive by changing. (Do you want to see Avatar on video at home or in 3-D on a big screen at the theater?) 

Communications consultant Flora Novarra, commenting on Lodico's post, makes a succinct case for e-mail's survival. "Would you really want to get your bank statement through your social network? Would you want a tweet from your ex arranging weekend visitation?"

 New technologies simply give people more choices. 

--Marilynne Rudick

Download Social Media Toolkits from Mass.gov

From the National Association of Government Communicators list, I'm reposting information about a great resource: three social media toolkits from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Thanks to Susan Parker, Director of Mass.gov for this info.)  The toolkits cover

• blogging
• Twitter
• legal issues pertaining to social media

You can read the toolkits online or download the blogging and Twitter toolkits as PDFs. (The legal guidelines toolkit isn't available as a PDF.)

Highlights from the toolkits

Legal Guidance Toolkit
I was thrilled when I read the opening sentence of the Legal Guidance Toolkit: "There are no legal prohibitions against state agencies using social media sites or having social media identities." Such unequivocal language should help reduce the unreasonable fear of social media that prevents many government agencies from trying new ways of communicating with constituents. 

Blogging Toolkit

The blogging toolkit includes a Blog Preparation Checklist, which reminds agencies to answer these questions before they jump into blogging:  

1. "Who is your audience?
2. What business goals can your blog help you meet?
3. What topics will you blog about?
4. How will you administer your blog?
5. What is your publication plan / schedule?
6. What changes do you need to make to the template privacy, terms of use and social media policies? Have they been posted to your Secretariat or agency website?
7. What changes do you need to make to the template comment policy?
8. How will you publicize your blog?"

Twitter Toolkit
The Twitter toolkit includes a Twitter Best Practices list with plenty of practical advice. In particular, I like these three points for government Twitter-ers:

• "Be transparent. Who exactly is blogging for your agency? Is it a person? Is it a department? Make sure people know how they can reach the party behind the tweets. It makes a big difference in the perceived authenticity of your efforts."
• "Be proactive. Make sure you promote your Twitter page. Include a link to your webpage on your Twitter account, and a link to your Twitter account from your webpage. Include it in your formal communications plans. Insert it into your email signatures."
• "Be realistic. Twitter isn't quite as easy as it seems. You need to plan to devote time and resources to active engagement on Twitter. Additionally, building an audience may take longer than anticipated. Don't let slower than hoped for results diminish your commitment."

Susan Parker promised future Mass.gov toolkits that will cover YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, wikis, and survey tools.  If she posts more information, I'll link to it here.

Does your organization have a social media toolkit or guidelines you could share? If so, please let me know or post a comment. Thanks.

-- Leslie O'Flahavan

Research Report: Old Writing Rules Apply to New Social Media

While updating our web writing courses, I've been scouring usability research to find new studies that apply to web writing. The findings from two separate research studies from the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University remind me that old web writing guidelines apply to new media—social networking sites. Both studies flagged common writing issues—confusing and unfamiliar terminology, and inadequate user feedback and error messages—as problems that harm usability.

1. Usability Evaluation of Three Social Networking Sites. The study evaluated the usability of MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut. Users completed 10 tasks for each site, including adding new information to a profile, making a photo album, and changing notification options for messages. Users rated the difficulty of each task and their satisfaction with each site.
2. Trick or Tweet: How Usable is Twitter for First-Time Users? Users performed eight tasks on Twitter, including creating an account, posting a tweet, and responding to a tweet. Users rated the ease of use and their satisfaction with the site. 

Confusing and Unfamiliar Terminology
SURL researchers found that inconsistencies in link terminology resulted in users' failure to complete tasks. For example, My Space uses the Term “My Account” as a link. But clicking on the link brought up a page with the heading “Settings.” 

Users were confused by unfamiliar terms. MySpace users clicked on “Photo Cube” expecting to make a photo album. They found that “Photo Cube” is a function that allows users to print photos. Twitter users were unclear about whether to use “Profile” or “Setting” to edit their information.

Not surprisingly, most new users “had difficulty learning the ‘language’ that was unique to Twitter.” What was the difference between followers and following? Users were confused about Twitter-unique terms such as “RT” (retweet) for reposting a message from another user, the use of @symbols to indicate usernames in tweets, and the use of hashtags (#) to indicate topic tags for messages.

Twitter language proved so confusing that users had very poor success rates in some tasks: Only 15.4% were successful in sending a message and only 38.5% were successful in replying to messages. Users concluded that Twitter was “complex and felt they would need to learn quite a bit before using it.” Participants reported that "they would not use the service often.”

Poor Feedback and Unhelpful Error Messages
Poor feedback and unhelpful error messages also contributed to the failure of social network users to complete tasks. MySpace provided a poor error message to users who forgot to give their photo albums a name. Twitter users often weren’t sure whether they had successfully completed a task  such as sending a message. They were looking for feedback, a completion message or visual confirmation—an icon or a change in font color—to confirm their success.

Tips for Applying the Research to Your Writing
The studies’ usability findings are specific to social networking sites. But applying the recommendations to your writing will improve the usability and user satisfaction for both traditional and new media websites. 

• Use terms consistently. Don’t change language mid-stream. For example, is “editing” a profile the same as “updating” a profile? If so, choose one term and use it throughout the site. Consistency is especially important for links because the repetition of link language assures users that they’ve landed on the correct page. If users click “My Account,” the landing page should be labeled “My Account” not ‘Setting.”
• Use plain and intuitive language. The link “print photos” is more intuitive than “photo cube.”
• Explain new terms. You may think a term is self-explanatory, but first-time users may not know your language: tweets, followers, following, photo cube, wall. Provide a brief explanation of terms when users encounter them or link to a glossary.
• Provide helpful feedback and useful error messages. Provide confirmation messages to users: “You have successfully added photos to your album.” Write error messages that explain why the user failed. “Your user name and password do not match” is more helpful than “login failed.”

--Marilynne Rudick

Social Media Press Release: Tips and Examples

Does the traditional press release format work in the world of 24-hour news, blogs, Facebook and Twitter? Many media professionals think the 100-year-old press release format is ineffective and obsolete. They're calling for a new approach. Read my companion post: The Social Media Press Release: A New Approach to the Old Problem of Getting Noticed.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Press Release (SMPR)

1. Think modular. Whether you are using the template approach or a traditionally written press release enhanced with multimedia and social media elements, make sure each component or section of the release can stand alone.
2. Link, link, link. Optimize links for search engine visibility. If your SMPR is being distributed by a news service, make sure to link back to a landing page or newsroom at your website. Include links to related information at other pages on your website. Link out to social bookmarking and social media sites, such as delicious, Digg, and Technorati.
3. Post content in multiple channels. In addition to including multimedia elements in your SMPR, post components of your release to appropriate sites for increased search engine visibility. For example, post your videos on YouTube and your photos on Flickr.
4. Write your SMPR content for online readers. They scan rather than read word for word. Write short, use bulleted lists, and write message headings.
5. Use keywords to maximize search engine ranking. Repeat the keywords in headlines, subheads, and in the text of the social media release.
6. Use visuals. Include your logo, a headshot of your organization's CEO, maps and charts, and photos of products or services. Also include video. Videos don’t have to be professionally produced. YouTube-quality videos help reporters understand your product, and that helps them explain it to their readers.
7. Incorporate interactivity. Engage in a conversation with the media and customers by providing a way for them to comment or ask questions.

Social Media Press Release: Resources and Examples

• “Anatomy of the Social Media Press Release,” a presentation delivered at the 2008 Public Relations Society of America conference, explains the concepts behind the SMPR and includes a good annotated sample.
• The National Restaurant Association lists its social media releases going back to December 2008,including “Winners of 2009 Restaurant Neighbor Award for Outstanding Community Service“ and “Healthy Kids’ Meals, Local Produce, Mini Desserts Among Hottest Menu Trends for 2009.”
• The 2008 GovGab SMPR announced the first birthday of GovGab, the U.S. government blog. The multimedia elements in this SMPR include audio, commenting, photos of the GovGab bloggers, and links to their bios.
• “Second Life Reforestation Project Qualifies as a Finalist in American Express Members Project,” distributed by RealWire, is a good example of an SMPR that uses the full gamut of social media elements, including video, tags, and commenting.
• Dupont’s release on Nomex® On Demand™ , fiber technology that protects firefighters, is a good example of a wire service traditional release enhanced with multimedia elements, including a YouTube video that shows how  Nomex® On Demand™ actually works.

--Marilynne Rudick

Social Media Press Release: A New Approach to the Old Problem of Getting Noticed

When more than 50 people lost their lives in a train wreck in 1906, Ivy Lee—the father of public relations—issued the first-ever news release, a public statement about the crash from Pennsylvania Railroad officials. The New York Times was so impressed with this innovative approach to corporate communications that it published the release verbatim.

Getting the NYT to publish a release is still every PR practitioner’s dream. But the reality is that although the press release remained the same for more than 100 years, the media landscape has changed beyond recognition, thanks to 24-hour cable news channels, fewer magazines and newspapers, and thousands of blogs and social media sites. With the major online news services distributing more than 2,000 press releases a day, the odds of your release getting noticed—much less reprinted verbatim—are slim to none. The majority of press releases end up in journalists’ trash bins.

In his 2006 blog post Die! Press release! Die! Die! Die!, Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher argued that the traditional press release incurs lots of expense and effort for little return. He issued a clarion call: Ditch the 100-year-old format and reinvent the press release to reflect the needs of today’s media.

Foremski’s redo—the social media press release, or SMPR—called for stripping the press release of “top-spin” (claims that something is the biggest, the newest, the best) and deconstructing the release into stand-alone components:

• A brief, straightforward description of the announcement about the new product, event, or service
• Quotes from top executives, customers, users, and analysts
• Financial information
• Product specs or other relevant details
• Multimedia elements
• Links to the organization’s website and external links to other news stories or resources
• Tagged content so that information can be easily found by search engines and social bookmarking sites, such as share-it!, Technorati, and delicious.

Announcing The Social Media Press Release Template
It didn’t take long for Foremski’s ideas about a 21st century press release to gain traction. Shift Communications was first out of the gate with its Social Media Press Release Template. True to form, it announced the SMPR template with, you guessed it, a release that uses the template. With input from PR professionals and journalists, the Social Media Group offered a refinement in 2008: its own social media press release template. Social Media Group’s template emphasizes audio, video, blogs, and interactivity.

Some Assembly Required
Foremski said that given the components of the SMPR, writers—whether they’re reporters or bloggers—can assemble the news story and put their own slant on the content. For example, a journalist writing an article about economic trends could draw from several SMPRs and buttress forecasts from the Federal Reserve with statistics from researchers and think tanks, as well as a quote drawn from the National Restaurant Association’s social media news release about economic trends in the restaurant industry.

Hybrid Releases: The Best of Old and New
Although some organizations have fully embraced the social media press release format, they are a definite minority. A 2009 MarketingSherpa study found that nearly 50 percent of B2B and B2C companies didn’t know what a social media press release was. Of those who did, only 20 percent actually distributed them.

More common is the multimedia news release (MNR), a press release that uses the traditional linear format but incorporates social media elements—photos, videos, podcasts, and social bookmarking. The online distribution services, including PRWeb, PRNewswire, and RealWire, offer MNR options. You can see an MNR example at the PRWeb site: “DuPont Introduces Innovative Nomex® On Demand™ to Better Protect Firefighters.”

One advantage of publishing an MNR rather than an SMPR: you “control” the story a bit more, while enriching it with multimedia and social media elements to make it more appealing to the reporter or blogger.

Overcoming Two SMPR Obstacles
One of the stumbling blocks in the adoption of social media press releases is figuring out how to distribute them. That’s why many organizations use multiple distribution channels. You can:

• Send an e-mail to your organization’s press or subscriber list that includes a link to the SMPR.
• Push the SMPR out via an RSS feed.
• Use online news release services, such as PRWeb, PRNewsWire, or RealWire, which have incorporated multimedia capabilities into their press release formats.
• Use a wire service to deliver a traditional press release (cheaper than a wire service MNR) with a link back to the organization’s newsroom, where the release is also available in a social media format.
• Announce the SMPR via social media—Twitter, corporate blog, LinkedIn, and Facebook—with a link to the SMPR.

Yet another challenge is institutional: getting the older staff members, who know products and press relations, to work with the younger ones, who may be web-savvy but have less product knowledge. You’ll have more success if you can get these two groups talking to each other and working as a team.

Changing Format Means Rethinking Goals and ROI
Nontraditional press releases have also changed the goals of a press release. “ROI of Online Press Releases,” a 2008 research study by the Society for New Communications Research, found that reaching customers directly, creating online content, and optimizing for search engines were as important as the traditional goals of announcing news and increasing visibility.

All change takes getting used to, so switching from the traditional press release to the social media press release may happen slowly in your organization. But with traditional newspaper and magazine publishing in a state of upheaval, the risk of clinging to the old press release format is too high. Social media’s no longer a novelty; publishing a press release in a social-media-friendly format just makes sense.

• For more information, see my companion post Social Media Press Release:Tips and Examples.

--Marilynne Rudick